# Another Wineador AW-281E Using Boveda and Extra Fans



## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

Hi everyone. I more or less have my wineador the way that makes me happy. I thought I'd do a write up (as if there isn't enough) of the whole experience.

If you want the readers digest version, here it is really quick.

AW-281E with 2 10cfm fans. I'm using 20 65% Boveda packs with the unit cooling at 66dF. No condensation is occurring and the humidity is holding at 64%. It's been about 2 months and the Boveda packs are as good as new.

My initial purchase of a 75 count humidor didn't work out too well. I had it full in a week or so and wanted to buy boxes of cigars. I soon had 8 large Boveda humidor bags in the closet. That works fine enough but it certainly isn't suitable for displaying anything. After looking on here mainly, I decided I needed a larger humidor that had the option of cooling. I thought this would be the cheaper option vs a smaller aristocrat end table type humidor but in the end, I've spent almost as much as that would have set me back.

I'm an instant gratification type of person. I scoured the internet for one of the already build CC-280Es and found a couple way over priced ones on Amazon and 1 company in New York that advertised that they had a couple in stock. Great I said and quickly snatched one up. I received an email saying that I had to complete a second shipping form and that the item would ship within 48 hours after they received it back. About 2 days later I received another email from them saying that they ordered the humidor and that the way was going to be about 3 months... Yep, 3 months.

I cancelled my order (that story is enough for a second post but I'll spare you the details) and I went to Forrests site and ordered shelves and drawers and then went to the local Best Buy to order the AW-281E. The 281 would arrive in 2 days while I had the shelving order expedited... His site says 2 weeks and that's about what you can expect. I did e-mail him prior to ordering to ensure that that window was still accurate. He said that when he gets a bunch of orders or expedited ones, he brings in extra help to knock them out.

While I waited on the shelving I did the recommended distilled vinegar/distilled water wipes along with newspaper. I also put some empty boxes in there to see if that would help. I think the plastic smell lasted maybe 2-3 days or so but I left the newspaper in since there was nothing better to do with it until the shelves arrived. I also used this time to set up my first fan setup. I had an empty Padron 26 #35 box and was in a hurry. It turned out ok but wasn't really happy with it. I figured that at some point I would make a new one. Routing the power wire through the drain hole was actually quite easy. I simply cut the cord and pushed it through. No drilling or anything was required other than removing the drip tray from the bottom. I spliced it so that the splice is inside the unit. Looking back I would have it on the outside if I were to do it again. I used solder and shrink tubing so it looks nice and it's very secure.

The parts I used for the fan box are:
(2) SilenX 60mm 10cfm 8 dba fan
(1) SilenX external 4 channel fan controller
And of course you need an empty box.



























My initial humidification plan was to use 69% Boveda packs. I would have 6 2 pack holders spread throughout the 5 shelves and 1 drawer for a total of 12 packs. I bought a 20 pack and already had a few laying around so the plan was to have 2 sets. While one was in the wineador, the 2nd set would be recharging.

Finally, the shelves arrived. I used 4 83% Boveda packs to season the humidor. I thought that removing some air space would help, so I added the Boveda Humidor Bags. I don't know if that was a smart thing or not but it made sense to me. After 2 weeks the humid level was staying around 75%. I did notice that condensation was showing up on the bottom of the unit. I was hoping that once cigars were introduced that it would solve itself. It was now time to load up the humidor.










After I got everything in, I noticed that my drawer was unused... And was probably going to remain unused. So I removed it. Around this time I made another change as well. I went from 69% to 65% packs. I also wanted to really load it up so that the humidity would be more stable. I added 2 4 slot Boveda holders bringing up the total capacity to 20 65% packs.

Here is the current setup: Notice that temperature is up and the humidity is down... I just had the door open for a couple minutes while installing my new fan box.










The only problem I've been having is the humidity is a little lower up top than the bottom. I can attribute this to it being loaded with boxes with little room to circulate the air and I noticed that the Padron box intake holes were being blocked by the shelf it was sitting on.

Yesterday I was at my B&M and noticed that he had a couple of empty boxes around. He graciously gave me a box and today, I made a new box. I reused the components from the earlier box.





































As said above in the readers digest version... The condensation problem did go away. I don't know if that's because it's almost full of boxes or if it's because of the extra Boveda packs. I'm hoping the angle of new box will direct air up the back of the unit instead of the bottom of the shelf above it.

Here's my recharging setup:

It doesn't look perfect but I took 2 containers and cut the bottom and top out of 1 set to match. I used Gorilla Glue because of an older project where I used silicone and the silicone never really dried and left a lasting odor. Anyway, I used some window screen that was laying around and sandwiched the 3 together.










Notes:

I would recommend the AW-281 over the AW-280. The reason is the number of slots available to accommodate the shelves. If you need a little more room on the 280, the next higher shelf slot is something like 3" higher. The 281 has slots about every 1.5" or so.

If you're going to use Boveda, go with a big number of packets.

If you're going to use a recharging setup like mine, I would use a hot knife to melt/cut the plastic away. It was very difficult and I was using a utility knife and ended up using modeling scissors.

Splice the fan power wire on the outside of the unit instead of the inside like mine.

I would have mounted the fans a little lower on the new box. I will do that if I get another shot at it.

I can't really think of anything else.

Take Care
Ryan


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## Nature (Jul 30, 2012)

Nice build Ryan! I really like the fans mounted in the box and the recharge set-up was well.

All those boxes in there are just re-used to store your cigars in, right? :wink:

Thanks for sharing with all of the pics.


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## ejewell (Feb 19, 2013)

I like how the way you mounted your fan controller in the new box gives a backlit effect to the fans. plus the re-purposing of the cigar box is sharp. I need to figure out how to increase circulation in my two wineadors. 

Good work. Like the marcas you have in there. I share similar tastes.


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## Senor_Perfecto (Apr 2, 2014)

I am using KL and 3 69% Bovedas in my 281E and I see only a 2% differential between the top/middle/bottom and no condensation. Since we've stabilized at around 68%, I'm going to go down to 65% Bovedas and see where we end up. I may even try just KL alone. I've never even spritzed it -- not even once. Works like a charm.

I have no fans in the unit, and it is turned on and running at 66 degrees. There are 2 boxes on 2 shelves, and a total of about 100 cigars in there at present... and growing...


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## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

I didn't mention the hygrometers that I am using. They're the hygrometers that Boveda sells. They're called Hygroset. If purchased from Boveda, they come with a calibration kit. The instructions are pretty straight forward. You drop the hygrometer in the bag and give it 24 hrs to balance out. You turn the dial to adjust the displayed RH to 75% and you push a "set" button. 

I've found that they were very difficult to get them to display a constant 75%. If it showed 70%, I turned the dial 5 clicks and pushed the set button. I put the meter back in the bag to confirm that it was set. Several hours later I checked on them and it was displaying 80%. It took several days to finally get it to settle at 75%.

On the initial post here, I made a comment about the RH difference between the top and bottom... It's only been 2 months but I decided to pull them and put them back in the calibration bag. They was a 5% difference between them. I calibrated them again and moved the from being attached to the glass to just sitting on the shelves. They're now showing the exact same RH.

I bought some new hygrometers from my local B&M. They're the Xikar Purotemp model. Xikar has an excellent reputation so I was happy to get them home and calibrate them. I should have read some reviews first. You cannot calibrate them at all but they're guaranteed to be accurate with an error of +/- 2%. I put them in the calibration kit to ensure they were accurate. After 12 hours one is showing 66% and one is showing 69%. I'm at work right now but once i get home tomorrow morning it'll be around 32 hours or so. If there's any interest I'll let you guys know if they're going back to the B&M or not.


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## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

ejewell said:


> I like how the way you mounted your fan controller in the new box gives a backlit effect to the fans. plus the re-purposing of the cigar box is sharp. I need to figure out how to increase circulation in my two wineadors.
> 
> Good work. Like the marcas you have in there. I share similar tastes.


Thank you. I feel it turned out really well. I didn't have a plan before getting the box and it hit me as I started to cut into it. Next time I go by the b&m I can hopefully pick up some more.

I like the cigars in your avatar... 52 more posts!! :mrgreen:


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## JustinThyme (Jun 17, 2013)

magoo6541 said:


> I didn't mention the hygrometers that I am using. They're the hygrometers that Boveda sells. They're called Hygroset. If purchased from Boveda, they come with a calibration kit. The instructions are pretty straight forward. You drop the hygrometer in the bag and give it 24 hrs to balance out. You turn the dial to adjust the displayed RH to 75% and you push a "set" button.
> 
> I've found that they were very difficult to get them to display a constant 75%. If it showed 70%, I turned the dial 5 clicks and pushed the set button. I put the meter back in the bag to confirm that it was set. Several hours later I checked on them and it was displaying 80%. It took several days to finally get it to settle at 75%.
> 
> ...


Hygroset, humicare or whatever they are branded are 200% junk. First ones I tried and after chasing back and forth with the dial over a few days and thought I was getting close the damned battey lost contact inside the enclosure and put me back to square one, that one met its demise against a brick wall. The non adjustable Xikars are not accurate either, tried that route too. The Xikars that can be calibrated are iffy, about a 50% change they will work. I bought two of them some time ago and one worked perfectly while the other calibrated then in just a few seconds while still it the bag it dropped from 75 to 67%. I will say that Xikar made it right even though it took 3 tries and the rep hunting down one of the adjustable ones with the first replacement being the newer no adjustable that was guaranteed to be +/-2% and was off by 6%. IN the photo is the new model and the one of two I got the first time that worked fine.










The one electronic hygro that I have had perfect results from 4 times is the Caliber IV. 2 of the 4 were dead on, one was off by 1% and the other by 2% which took nothing more than pressing a button to alleviate. Another avenue that I installed in one of my desktops is an analog hair hygrometer. I bought an Adorini and it was bawlz on right out of the box.


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## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

JustinThyme said:


> Snip.....


I agree with the hygros being junk.

I'll look into taking back the Xikars and getting the Caliber IV.

Thanks


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## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

As a small update, I've read a number of threads about temperature controllers. After reading, I felt that I needed a way to ensure than after a power outage, my wineador would not reset to 55dF.

Where I live, we get our power from a plant that is quite a ways away. Any significant storm between here and there will result in power surges and minor outages. This happens frequently enough that I felt it necessary to do something. I started researching surge protectors with battery backup but was unsure of what exactly was required. I pretty much decided that I was going to get the largest capacity available within a reasonable price. As luck would have it, another member started a thread and asked that very question. Again, as luck would have it, member JustinThyme is not only super knowledgable about cigars, he's also a rep for APC and MGE UPS systems. He gave some great suggestions and as a result, my cigars and I will sleep much better tonight knowing that they are well protected against minor power outages.

http://www.cigarforums.net/forums/v...-cooler-reset-back-55f-after-power-surge.html

I settled on the 1080vA model. From Best Buy you can expect to be set back around $150. This is quite a bit more expensive than a simple temperature controller but I felt it was cheap insurance for my collection.

The highlights of the APC Back UPS NS 1080, as it pertains to wineadors are:

Surge protection with battery back up
Long battery life for solely powering your wineador
Master outlet with controlled outlets

With the unit not cooling, it's drawing minimal power and the unit displays a battery run time of 384 minutes. That's 6 hours 24 minutes!

With the unit actively cooling, it goes way down to 74 minutes but, the unit won't be actively cooling the entire time.

During a power outage, the HVAC will be down and the ambient temperature will rise causing the unit to run more than normal. I would estimate that the total battery time would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5-3 hours.

I plugged in the wineador into the master outlet and the fan box into the controlled outlet. You have to enable the energy saving feature first and you're good to go. Once the wineador goes into an idle mode, the APC senses this and cuts power to the controlled outlet. So my fans used to run 24/7 but now they only run when the unit is actively cooling.

2 features that make me excited to have made this purchase.

The unit has a bunch more features that mostly pertain to computers... It's actually quite impressive so if you have a nice computer system, you may want to look into it or a comparable unit.

The one thing I wish it did (and it may actually do this, I don't know) is that when the battery is drained from a power outage, when power is restored, it wouldn't send power to the outlets to turn the wineador back on. JustinThyme, do you know if that's a possible feature?


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## Senor_Perfecto (Apr 2, 2014)

That's a cool idea (if pricey) -- did you see any cheaper SPs that would work on a 28 bottle wineador?


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## JustinThyme (Jun 17, 2013)

magoo6541 said:


> The one thing I wish it did (and it may actually do this, I don't know) is that when the battery is drained from a power outage, when power is restored, it wouldn't send power to the outlets to turn the wineador back on. JustinThyme, do you know if that's a possible feature?


There is such a critter but unfortunately not on this model. The name for the option is auto restart and in the units that have that option you can have it enabled or disabled. IT industry standard is to have it disabled so the UPS will not restart after battery depletion or a complete shutdown for other reasons (like bad batteries) The only exception is for remote unmanned stations like the cable and phone company outposts. There are two reasons for this, most importantly they dont want servers to reboot on their own and the other is so they can see just what happened. Nothing worse than walking into a data center with a bunch of servers that crashed then looking at the UPS to see it running just fine so you rule out loss of power as the culprit although it was.

There is a way it can be done otherwise though with a little ingenuity, a home made distribution box, a push button and a relay. The idea would be to have the relay wired to latch on when you push the button and when powered dropped out it would drop out the relay until you pushed the button again. You basically just wire the hot through one of the normally open contacts then wire hot to one side of the normally open push button and the other to the coil with a parallel path to hold it in though one of the replay contacts.

Here is a drawing, just use 120V instead of 12V and you dont need the second switch to drop it out unless you want to.

"How to build a latching relay circuit"


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## magoo6541 (Mar 9, 2014)

Senor_Perfecto said:


> That's a cool idea (if pricey) -- did you see any cheaper SPs that would work on a 28 bottle wineador?


In the other post about the UPS, I referenced the other thread. In that one JustinThyme suggested that a 500vA model would also work. He knows a lot more than I but I would guess that you'll be looking at about a 1hr-1.5hr window for the power to come back on.


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